TRAVELLER EXTRAORDINARY THE LIFE OF JAMES BRUCE OF KINNAIRD J. M. REID EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE, LONDON 1968 First Edition. 22 x 14 cm. 320 pp + b/w photo plates. Map endpapers. HB/DJ 'Bruce is a rough minded man ... I have seen him as a curiosity and extracted from him a good essay for the London Magazine.' Such was James Boswell's comment on James Bruce of Kinnaird when in 1774 Bruce arrived in London after five years spent travelling through Ethiopia in search of the source of the Blue Nile. Bruce was one of the first scientific explorers, vet his contemporaries viewed his grandiloquent accounts of his travels with open disbelief. A few years previously, Samuel Johnson in Rasselas had pictured the Ethiopians as princely philosophers gently discussing profound truths in the glory of an ancient Christian civilisation! Now Bruce talked of naked savages, strange customs, barbaric warfare and civil decay. He told of the wild Galla—tribesmen who garlanded their necks and bodies with animal entrails—of strange orgiastic feasts, and of the ruthless Ras Michael and his beautiful wife, Esther. But what seemed most shocking were his tales of Ethiopians eating raw beef, cut from the haunches of living animals. Bruce was undoubtedly a romantic. He had an extraordinary pride in his descent from the Scottish kings which led him to view George III as a royal cousin. His self-deception, indeed, was often absurd. He convinced himself he was the first European to discover the source of the Blue Nile, a claim that was easily disproved; and he could casually leave his sweetheart behind for twelve years and return to threaten a duel with the Italian marquis who, he found, had married her. Yet as J. M. Reid shows, he was not just an adventurer. His Travels, published in 1790, contain a wealth of historical detail about eighteenth century Ethiopia. He wrote assiduously of its languages, customs and peoples; of plants, and vegetation, of art and culture. But above all he evokes the fascination of the places he visited, Gondar, Susquam, and the Kingdom of the Fung; and the individuals whom he met, Esther, Ras Michael, the young Emperor Takla Haymanot, Powussen, Ras Fasil and many others. He witnessed at firsthand the varied life of an old civilisation in a period of tension and civil strife, and recorded his vivid impressions for posterity. J. M. Reid uses all the available original material, particularly Brace's own Travels to discover the source of the Nile and his personal papers, now at Broomhall, to draw an intriguing portrait of this larger-than-life Scot who, despite his exaggerations and self-deceptions, ranks as one of the great figures in Europe's discovery of Africa.

TRAVELLER EXTRAORDINARY

THE LIFE OF JAMES BRUCE OF KINNAIRD

J. M. REID

EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE, LONDON
1968

First Edition

'Bruce is a rough minded man ... I have seen him as a curiosity and extracted from him a good essay for the London Magazine.'

Such was James Boswell's comment on James Bruce of Kinnaird when in 1774 Bruce arrived in London after five years spent travelling through Ethiopia in search of the source of the Blue Nile. Bruce was one of the first scientific explorers, vet his contemporaries viewed his grandiloquent accounts of his travels with open disbelief.

A few years previously, Samuel Johnson in Rasselas had pictured the Ethiopians as princely philosophers gently discussing profound truths in the glory of an ancient Christian civilisation! Now Bruce talked of naked savages, strange customs, barbaric warfare and civil decay. He told of the wild Galla—tribesmen who garlanded their necks and bodies with animal entrails—of strange orgiastic feasts, and of the ruthless Ras Michael and his beautiful wife, Esther. But what seemed most shocking were his tales of Ethiopians eating raw beef, cut from the haunches of living animals.

Bruce was undoubtedly a romantic. He had an extraordinary pride in his descent from the Scottish kings which led him to view George III as a royal cousin. His self-deception, indeed, was often absurd. He convinced himself he was the first European to discover the source of the Blue Nile, a claim that was easily disproved; and he could casually leave his sweetheart behind for twelve years and return to threaten a duel with the Italian marquis who, he found, had married her.

Yet as J. M. Reid shows, he was not just an adventurer. His Travels, published in 1790, contain a wealth of historical detail about eighteenth century Ethiopia. He wrote assiduously of its languages, customs and peoples; of plants, and vegetation, of art and culture. But above all he evokes the fascination of the places he visited, Gondar, Susquam, and the Kingdom of the Fung; and the individuals whom he met, Esther, Ras Michael, the young Emperor Takla Haymanot, Powussen, Ras Fasil and many others. He witnessed at firsthand the varied life of an old civilisation in a period of tension and civil strife, and recorded his vivid impressions for posterity.

J. M. Reid uses all the available original material, particularly Brace's own Travels to discover the source of the Nile and his personal papers, now at Broomhall, to draw an intriguing portrait of this larger-than-life Scot who, despite his exaggerations and self-deceptions, ranks as one of the great figures in Europe's discovery of Africa.

22 x 14 cm. 320 pp + b/w photo plates. Map endpapers.

Very good condition, dust jacket edge worn, some light foxing to page edges, otherwise clean and tidy.  







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